The applicant is the assignee of the U.S. Pat. No. 6,437,229, filed on Nov. 17, 2000 and issued on Aug. 20, 2002, and it relates to an EQUIPMENT AND PROCESS FOR MUSIC DIGITALIZATION, STORAGE, ACCESS, AND LISTENING, which equipment and process are to be employed in any commercial establishments trading CDs, in order to enable users to listen to all the music tracks from all the CDs available at the store.
Said equipment and process are based on the digitizing of the music tracks and their storage in a hard disk for later access and hearing.
As a rule, they provide for one or more digital music servers (microcomputers where the music tracks from digitized CDs shall be stored), one or more music digitizing stations (microcomputers in charge of digitizing one passage of each music track from each CD), and a number of listening stations (microcomputers through which the music tracks stored in said servers may be accessed and listened by users). Each listening station, provided with an earphone, a keyboard with display, and a bar code reader, communicates via local network with said servers. Each music CD is provided with a bar code tag that identifies it on an individual basis, in an unmistakable way.
The listening stations described in the abovementioned patent are relatively costly due to the fact that each one comprises a personal computer (PC). Moreover, the apparatus described in this patent consists of a local system, in which the updating of the digital music server can only be made by means of the local digitizing station.
Patent document WO0209112 “Music listening system” describes a system comprising music listening stations which enable customers to select, from a library of music tracks, stored in the station's large capacity memory means, the tracks they wish to listen to, prior to deciding whether to make a purchase. These tracks are extracted from a distributable music storage means, such as an upload CD-ROM which also includes index means and a configuration file. Said distributable music storage means are produced in a host computer provided with software that comprises a compression function, encryption function, indexing function, etc. Each listening station comprises: a CD-ROM drive; a hard disk drive; a microprocessor of the form used in personal computer (PC's); decoders comprising digital signal processor chips and a digital-to-analogue converter as well as two headsets for listening.
Among the shortcomings associated with the object of WO 0209112 is the high cost of each music digital station, due to the fact that it includes a CD drive, a hard disk drive and a PC-type microprocessor.
Additionally, the updating of the library of music tracks in each station—detailed in line 8 and following, page 40 of said WO document—is a cumbersome and time-consuming process, requiring the e-mailing of a request from the store operator to the host computer for an album/track listing, the creation of one or more upload CD-ROM's by the host computer operator and their delivery to the store for insertion in each listening station.
Furthermore, as described in line 23 and following, page 41, the deletion of files from a listening post's memory requires the insertion of a “null” CD which has to be inserted in the CD-ROM drive, an action that has to be performed by an operator.